Under the Shadow of this Red Rock: Reading TS Eliot's The Waste Land for its Places, Persons ...

196 Pages·2008·0.56 MB·English

by  Chrispi Cakes

AN ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OF

Stephen James Summers for the degrees of Honors Baccalaureate of Arts in English and
Honors Baccalaureate of Arts in Philosophy presented on May 22, 2008. Title: Under the
Shadow of this Red Rock: Reading T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land for its Places, Persons,
and Poetics.

Abstract approved:
_
Kerry D. Ahearn

Thomas Stearns Eliot’s 1922 modernist poem The Waste Land presents itself as an
alternative to the decaying society Eliot found himself inhabiting. It begins as a personal
means of pulling together one’s fragmented consciousness, but in doing so Eliot manages
to present a solution to a world of selfishness—looking beyond ourselves. Through a
careful study of the landscapes and urban scenes Eliot presents we can see the progress of
his characters’ fates over the course of five seasons. A close look at these individuals
populating The Waste Land will further enlighten our search for answers to the drought.
Finally, Eliot’s rich language will be its own ambiguous key to enlightenment, demanding
that we critically consider the scenarios he presents. Along the way, Eliot will invoke an
enormous number of literary and cultural sources to create the tale’s framework, from
Dante and Chaucer to Whitman and F. H. Bradley. The poet will also draw from religious
traditions of the world, with a particular influence on Buddhism and Christianity to help
navigate his wilderness. All the while, the tarot deck and Arthurian myth cycle will be our
dubious guides. But at last, the journey will be worth it.

Key Words: T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land, tarot, humours, Philomela, Dante
Corresponding e-mail address:
© Copyright Stephen James Summers
May 22, 2008
All Rights Reserved
Under the Shadow of this Red Rock:

Reading T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land for its Places, Persons, and Poetics

by

Stephen James Summers

A PROJECT

Submitted to

Oregon State University

University Honors College

in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for the
degrees of

Honors Baccalaureate of Arts in English and Honors Baccalaureate of Arts in Philosophy
(Honors Scholar)

Presented May 22, 2008
Commencement June 2008
Honors Baccalaureate of Arts in English and Honors Baccalaureate of Arts in Philosophy
project of Stephen James Summers presented on May 22, 2008.

APPROVED:

________________________________________________________________________
Mentor, representing English

________________________________________________________________________
Committee Member, representing English

________________________________________________________________________
Committee Member, representing Writing

________________________________________________________________________
Chair, Department of English

________________________________________________________________________
Dean, University Honors College

I understand that my project will become part of the permanent collection of Oregon State
University, University Honors College. My signature below authorizes release of my
project to any reader upon request.

________________________________________________________________________
Stephen James Summers, Author
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I wish to thank first my academic guides: my committee members Professor Barry
Lawler, Dr. Tara Williams, and in particular my mentor, Dr. Kerry Ahearn. All of you
professors were my favorites—I kept taking all of your classes for a reason. Without their
generous participation in this project it would not have happened, especially considering
the tight timetable I forced upon them. I want to also give my gratitude to Rebekah
Lancelin for her ongoing support throughout my tenure at Oregon State, who told me this
thesis would be no big deal and that I could worry about it later.
In addition to the above, I thank my English professors: Dr. C. Anderson (Dante),
Dr. H. Brayman Hackel (Donne), Dr. E. Campbell (my first look at The Waste Land), Dr.
N. Davison (more Eliot), Dr. E. Gottlieb (Keats), Dr. K. Holmberg (helping me hone my
poetics), Dr. M. Oriard (saying hello), Dr. R. Pappas (Shakespeare), and Dr. D. Robinson
(helping me hone my research). Likewise, my philosophy professors: Dr. J. Blumenthal
(Buddhism), Dr. C. Campbell (being ethical), Dr. S. Clough (calling on me), Dr. R. Jones
(explanations), Dr. F. Leibowitz (aesthetics), Dr. W. McCullough (calmness), Dr. L.
Roberts (passion), Dr. M. Scanlan (everything), and Dr. W. Uzgalis (enlightening). Also
my previous teachers, Barnett, Dage, Greenleaf, Mikulec, Minson—among many others.
And I’ve saved the best for last: I want to acknowledge the amazing people
involved in InterVarsity Christian Fellowship at OSU and all over Oregon for their love
and support and their hearts for God, peace, and justice. Beyond them, I love all of you
my friends that I abandoned in this project, as well as family, my grandparents, the
Ettlichs, brothers (both of you kids), and parents (remember, I spared you editing this). I
also must sincerely thank Chrissi, my love, for putting up with all this nonsense.
Lastly, thanks be to the God from whom all blessings (and creativity) flow.
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………………….1

A Final Note……………………………………………………………………...3

PART I: “THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD”……………………………………………...4

Overview………………………………………………………………………….4
Section One (ll. 1-18): Chaucer and the New Spring…………………………….5
Section Two (ll. 19-42): St. Narcissus in the Desert…………………………….13
Section Three (ll. 43-59): The Famous Clairvoyante and the Fisher King……...22
Section Four (ll. 60-76): Dante in London……………………………………....35

PART II: “A GAME OF CHESS”………………………………………………………43

Overview……………………………………………………………………….43
Section One (ll. 77-110): The Burnished Cage………………………………….44
Section Two (Lines 111-138): Forced Conversations…………………………...57
Section Three (Lines 139-172): Closing Time at the Pub……………………….66

PART III: “THE FIRE SERMON”……………………………………………………...74

Overview……………………………………………………………………….74
Section One (ll. 173-206): Of Rivers and Rats…………………………………..75
Section Two (ll. 207-248): Tiresias on Love…………………………………….90
Section Three (ll. 249-265): The Gramophone Sonnet…………………………101
Section Four (ll. 266-311): The River’s Song………………………………….108

PART IV: “DEATH BY WATER”…………………………………………………….119

Overview……………………………………………………………………….19
Section the First and Only (ll. 312-321): Death of a Sailor…………………….120

PART V: “WHAT THE THUNDER SAID”…………………………………………...127

Overview……………………………………………………………………….127
Section One (ll. 322-365): One Walking in the Wilderness…………………….129
Section Two (Lines 366-94): Music from Unreal City…………………………143
Section Three (Lines 395-422): A New Old World…………………………….157
Section Four (Lines 423-434): Dénouement……………………………………169

CONCLUSIONS………………………………………………………………………..175

BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………179
DEDICATION

To my teachers—
Past, Present, and Future—

and

To everyone who has ever taken the time—
To tell me something useful I didn’t already know—

—I sincerely thank you.
UNDER THE SHADOW OF THIS RED ROCK: READING T. S. ELIOT’S THE
WASTE LAND FOR ITS PLACES, PERSONS, AND POETICS

Introduction
“April is the cruellest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing /
Memory and desire” (Eliot 1-3). Thus begins the seminal work of modernism, T. S.
Eliot’s The Waste Land, his epic for modern times. First published in 1922, the poem
defined not only the emptiness Eliot perceived in his contemporary time but also
addressed the spiritual “drought” in his own life. It is a poem begun and rooted within the
deep recesses of past memory, and it relies upon these connections to make sense of the
present and move tenuously forward. Thrown into a world of materialism and human
isolation, devoid of passion and hope, Eliot seeks a mist in the midst of the drought, a
shower of hope to wash the world anew. In recalling the myths of history, in recounting
the legends and literature of the past, Eliot is not simply discussing a common theme in
world literature. He does not write dispassionately from a distance, nor does he sum up a
state of affairs that can be prodded with a pen and then forgotten; Eliot wrote in the
middle of his own torment, with his world drying up around him. In the midst of some
“hysteria” he could not rectify he wrote, and this poem is the therapeutic result of that
period (Koestenbaum 115; Gold 519-20).
The Waste Land thus is Eliot’s personal journey to resolution but also a work for
his world, and he writes it not only to comment but to correct. It is the effort of creation
that will help him make sense of the result. Like the knights roving for the Holy Grail,
Eliot will search for a water source to refresh the world even if no such rebirth exists.
From its earliest elements to its final formation, The Waste Land was over seven years in
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composing, and it can be read Eliot’s own quest, varying as it does with the changes of
time and tide over a span of years (Gordon 557). The wasteland can then be conquered
only by first understanding it, identifying it; naming it as such gives power over it. The
entirety of The Waste Land will be made up of connections that attempt to make sense of
some aspect of experience. Thus we should view the poem not as a single solid aesthetic
“artifact” but as an exploration of the “mode of dis-covery or dis-closure” (Spanos 231).
Eliot believes that if he can show that this new world is nothing more than a recurring
cycle with a means of escape, then he can defeat his demons. His paradigm for
comprehension, his guide on the quest, is literature, the great conversations of the past.
Thus Eliot attempts to encapsulate a portrait of the past in his image of the future.
Herein we are echoes of Homer’s forever-questing Odysseus, Shakespeare’s ever-
deliberating Hamlet, and Dante’s constant search for the Divine. Dante in particular will
become an important contextual space. The Waste Land is populated with a great number
of voices though at last they may all coalesce into one prophetic sound (Easthope 332).
This voice—Eliot’s own—becomes inseparable from the artwork itself, and the poet will
use the power of speech to conjure names and truths that will bring light to a morally-,
religiously-, and psychologically-dried-up land.
Eliot’s masterpiece is a creation that will turn a darkened society into something
comprehensible, making sense of the chaotic senselessness with the ciphers of the past.
The poem is not proposing a remedy to the problem of contemporary culture; the poem is
itself the cure. The poem is less an answer than an exploration of the means at which we
attempt to find such answers (see Miller 160-5). Eliot has too much at stake in The Waste
Land to play at pedantic solutions, and will instead stick to his own experience.
With this in mind, in each section of this essay we will focus a great deal of
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attention on several themes throughout The Waste Land, many of them centered upon just
these voices. First, we will be examining the settings that provide the backdrop to each
scene, and how these motifs create a context for the heroic quest for renewal, from the
literary and visual material they draw in. Beyond this we will be spending significant time
studying the characters Eliot has chosen as his voices, the men and women of the
wasteland, with all of their various problems of barrenness, isolation, decadence, ennui,
and—perhaps—their hopes. We will do this through a line-by-line look at the language of
form, how Eliot makes a work of art through the joining of apparent-incompatibilities. As
the quest for rebirth unfolds, these patterns will be our guide through a darkened passage.
Finally, one caveat: in the words of Marianne Thormählen, “A work of art such as
The Waste Land cannot be subjugated under any one fixed interpretative scheme, it lives
its own life in its readers…” (Thormählen 40). As such I make no claims to have “solved”
the “question of The Waste Land,” whatever that may be, I only present my own
reinterpretation of the poem as I personally read it, just as Eliot presented only what he
had found out for himself. Certainly, you the reader will do the same.

A Final Note:
References to “Eliot” and a line (or simply a line number alone) refer to the
Penguin The Waste Land and Other Poems. Kermode’s references and Eliot’s “Notes on
the Waste Land” are also from that volume. References to Valerie Eliot are found in The
Waste Land: A Facsimile and “North” refers to the Norton Critical Edition of The Waste
Land. Citations to Rainey are from The Annotated Waste Land with Eliot’s Contemporary
Prose. Also, “The Waste Land” refers to Eliot’s poem, while “wasteland” is meant to
address the physical landscape Eliot describes, not the poem itself.